Donald Trump has always loved tyrants. He has been an admirer of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president to the point of being seemingly desirous to carry out his every wish concerning US -Russian relations. Some view this as suspicious given Putin’s intervention in the US presidential election of 2016 to help ensure the election of Trump. Robert Mueller, the former long-time FBI Director has been conducting an investigation into possible “collusion” between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government for over a year on behalf of the Department of Justice. But President Trump’s admiration of tyrants doesn’t stop there. He has also bestowed lavish praise on Victor Orban who appears to be turning Hungary into a fascist state, Recep Erdogan who is well on his way to the destruction of Turkey’s democracy, Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, who is on his way to establishing a military dictatorship in civilian garb in Egypt and in the process, ordered the massacre of thousands of peaceful protesters and Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines, who has caused to be executed hundreds perhaps thousands of people allegedly involved with drugs, both users and providers, without any sort of trial whatsoever. Both Putin and Duterte have been invited to the White House by Trump but both have declined for now.
Just this week in Singapore, on June 12th he met with one of the most brutal tyrants of all, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, covering him with unstinting praise. Trump pronounced that he had forged an “excellent relationship “with Kim and proclaimed him to be a “very talented man” who “loves his country very much.” He then proceeded to sign a wholly one-sided agreement with Kim in which he appeared to accept North Korea as a nuclear equal to the United States and in the process announced the suspension of the joint US-South Korean annual military exercises seen as a major deterrent to North Korean aggression using the North Korean term “war games” to refer to them, and indicated that the United States would withdraw its 30,000 troops stationed in South Korea. All three of these US concessions have been major objectives of the North Korean government for the last 30 years. In return Trump received astonishingly little from North Korea—the simple reaffirming of the same commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula that North Korea has repeated regularly but never even begun to carry out since 1992. President Trump announced at the subsequent press conference that “They were willing to de-nuke” without a shred of public commitment to support this-and of course tyrants will say anything to advance their objectives. There was no mention of the long stated bedrock position of the United States that North Korea must agree to the complete, verifiable and irreversible elimination of its nuclear stockpile, something they are virtually certain never to do. Some say that the meeting was valuable because war is now further off than it was a year age. But is it? The War Scare was entirely of Trump’s own making. The bottom line is that Kim Jong UN got all he could have ever wanted and Trump achieved his PR moment, nothing more. That is the sum total of what was accomplished.
Roger Cohen in his articled dated June 15th in the Washington Post said that what Singapore really demonstrated is that, “The President is envious of Kim who has the absolute authority to execute his uncle with antiaircraft machine guns, consign tens of thousands of people to the gulag, and rule through a personality cult based on ruthless indoctrination.” He went on to assert that, “the evidence is now overwhelming that Trump cannot resist a dictator. Kim is ‘funny’…Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine President, is doing ‘an unbelievable job on the drug problem’ through mass arrests and extra judicial killings, Xi Jimping, is just ‘great’. Vladimir Putin’s human rights violations are not worth a mention because, ‘What do you think, our country’s so innocent?’”
On June 16th, 2018 one of the lead articles in The Washington Post was entitled, “With Praise of Kim, Trump widens totalitarian embrace” by Phillip Rucker. In the article Rucker notes the following, “reflecting on his impressions of Kim following their Singapore summit, Trump told Fox News: ‘He’s the head of a country, and I mean he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.’” Rucker added hastily that it was unclear whether President Trump was referring to the American people generally or only to his staff. Later when pressed by a CNN reporter Trump “claimed it had been a joke”.
But almost worse, on his way to Singapore Trump savaged his six democratic partners in the G-7 organization a group essential to the peace and financial stability of the world community. But they are democracies, not tyrannies, and therefore perhaps he thought they were fair game. President Trump has ordered major tariffs placed on the import of goods from the six countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and Canada. The tariffs were imposed for reasons of national security. This was done not because these countries actually are a national security threat to the United States but rather in order to get around the Congressional control of tariffs. Nevertheless they were on the receiving end. All of them are outraged that they, the best friends and supporters that the US has, are subject to such treatment. Likely this will be one more seriously deleterious blow to NATO. One wonders how much more of this our European and Asian allies can absorb. And with no warning, on Friday, June 9th, President Trump proposed that Russia be readmitted to the G-7, having been suspended because of its seizure of Crimea and the commencement of de facto hostilities against the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. This proposal was unanimously rejected by the other six. It now almost seems that we have a G-6 plus one.
Trump arrived late to the G-7 meeting and left early generally showing his contempt for the organization. While for the public the leaders appeared positive, the meetings were tense and fractious. The various national staffs worked late on Friday night attempting to draft a document that all countries could sign. At a fraught meeting on Saturday the leaders eventually agreed on a joint communiqué which it was understood all supported and which was released Saturday night. At a press conference Saturday night Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when asked about the tariffs on steel and aluminum that Trump had announced he planned to impose on Canada, replied that Trump’s use of a national security provision to impose the tariffs was “kind of insulting” given that Canadians had fought side by side with Americans in a number of wars. He said it was a difficult decision but that he had informed Trump that Canada would retaliate with its own tariffs although they do not relish doing it, “But it is something we absolutely will do. Because Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.” Trump responded to this from Air Force One by twitter disavowing the communique, calling Prime Minister Trudeau “weak and dishonest” and accusing him of making false statements.
Sunday morning Trudeau publicly ignored the dispute but his Foreign Minister said “The national security pretext is absurd and frankly insulting to Canadians, the closest and strongest ally the United States has had. That is where the insult lies”. Roland Paris, a former foreign affairs advisor to Trudeau went further: “Big Tough guy once back on the airplane. Can’t do it in person and knows it, which makes him feel weak. So he projects these feelings onto Trudeau and then lashes out at him. You don’t need to be Freud. He’s a pathetic little man-child”. The other G-7 leaders supported Trudeau: President Macron said that International cooperation can’t depend on small words.”; Prime Minister May said she was “fully supportive of Justin Trudeau;” The German Foreign Minister noted that “Its actually not a real surprise”, indicating that this was something that has been seen before and urged European nations to stick together. And late Saturday Senator John McCain rebutted Trump’s position by tweeting: “To our Allies; bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & support our allies based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you even if our president doesn’t”.
On June 4th President Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, published an article in the Washington Post the day before the anniversary of his death. She commented that people often ask what her father would say if he were here now. Among many other things he would say she thought would be to remind us that we began “as a dream in the minds of men who dared to envision a land that was free of tyranny with a government designed and structured so that no one branch could dominate the others.” “Our government because it is founded on the authority of ‘We the people’ puts the burden of vigilance on all American citizens.” “Countries can be splintered from within” he would say. “It’s a sinister form of destruction that can happen gradually if people don’t realize that our Constitution can protect us only if the principles of that document are adhered to and defended.” “He would be appalled and heartbroken at a Congress that refuses to stand up to a president who not only seems ignorant of the Constitution but who also attempts at every turn to dismantle and mock our system of checks and balances.” He in all humility would ask us to reflect on his own words in his famous speech delivered in 1964: ” You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” With tyranny and those years of darkness threatening and our world of friends and principles being pulled apart it is important to reflect on those words of Ronald Reagan.
Now some thoughts on tyranny by our Founders.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Number 1 (1788) a passage most relevant to our present day.
“A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and of those men who have overturned the liberties of the Republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”
Thomas Jefferson-1810
“A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, and life, liberty property, and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.”
John Hancock-1774
“Some boast of being friends to government, I am a friend to righteous government founded on the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.
Alexander Hamilton-1774
“No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.”
Benjamin Franklin-language he proposed for the motto on the Great Seal of the United States.
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God”
Thomas Jefferson in expressing a fundamental American principle in 1800 (the year he was elected the third President of the United States):
“I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
John Jay
